For over a decade now I’ve been telling folks that compounds in cannabis can selectively target and kill malignant cancer cells. It seems like some media outlets finally starting to get the message.
Today, the good folks at HuffingtonPost.com published my latest essay on the subject, “What Your Government Knows About Cannabis And Cancer — And Isn’t Telling You.”
Since the Huffington Post is an online medium, I made it a point to include nearly a dozen links to pertinent research and clinical/pre-clinical trials demonstrating that cannabinoids possess anti-cancer properties.
Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and brain cancer. (An excellent paper summarizing much of this research, “Cannabinoids for Cancer Treatment: Progress and Promise,” appears in the January 2008 edition of the journal Cancer Research.) A 2006 patient trial published in the British Journal of Cancer even reported that the intracranial administration of THC was associated with reduced tumor cell proliferation in humans with advanced glioblastoma.
For most visitors to the Huffington Post, my essay will be their first exposure to this information, but ideally, not their last. Hopefully, readers of the site — which is one of the most visited on the Internet — will join us in our calls to end the US government’s multi-decade long denial of this potentially groundbreaking research.
You can read the full text of my essay here.
Please feel free to leave a comment and/or circulate this article widely (Digg it, reddit, buzz up, etc.) My last Huff Post essay, “Don’t Buy The ‘Potent Pot’ Hype,” received nearly 100 comments, a personal response from the Drug Czar’s office, and earned me a guest spot on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s live nationally syndicated radio show. That said, in my opinion, the government’s cover-up of pot’s anti-cancer abilities is a far more important topic; hopefully we can get a similar buzz started.
PS: Those interested in learning more about this topic can download an audio file of my recent guest appearance on the radio show, “Sex, Drugs, and Civil Liberties,” (KOPN: Columbia, Missouri) here.